Muirhead and Murdoch keep Scotland ticking over at Euros

Eve Muirhead praised her team’s resilience as Scotland’s women recovered from a poor start to see off the challenge of Latvia at the European Curling Championships in Stavanger.

Scotland were looking to build on a solid opening win against Russia as they took on Latvia, however started slowly as opposition skip Evita Regza opened up a 3-0 lead after three ends.

But Scottish skip Muirhead didn’t panic and she leapt into a 5-3 lead in the fourth end before Latvia replied with a single in the next.

Muirhead pushed Scotland further ahead by two in the sixth end before they stole a single in the seventh for an 8-4 lead.

Latvia replied with a single in the eighth but after Scotland scored four in the next end to take a 12-5 lead, their opponents called it a day.

Scotland joined Switzerland and Sweden as the only unbeaten teams left in the women’s event but Muirhead admitted they had to dig deep in order to do so.

“They played a lot of good shots actually, and we had a few slack ones that let them in,” Muirhead said.

“We can take a lot from that game because we could have got frustrated out there. Three down and we could have perhaps written the game off.

“But we had a good fourth end and managed to get that big five, and that was just through good shot playing.

“Once you’re two up you’re just trying not to give away a silly two and that’s what we did. We managed to take our two when we had the hammer and saw the game off.”

Meanwhile, Scotland’s men followed suit as David Murdoch led his team to their second victory of the competition with a 9-4 win over Finland.

Finland stated well by stealing one in the second end but Scotland replied with two in the third and never looked back – wrapping up the win in the ninth.

Scotland’s men have now won two and lost one of their opening three matches and Murdoch was full of praise for Finland after running them close.

Murdoch said: “Finland actually played tremendously well in the first few ends and we had to hit top gear to get away from them.

“But we got a big steal in the fourth and that was it. We had lots of patience in the sixth, we made a couple nice ones in the end and then ‘boom!’ – there’s your three. That was pretty much game over.”